Softimage announced price cuts for the XSI family of 3D programs. XSI Foundation, the entry level version of XSI is now priced at $495 (the same price that a student/academic version of XSI Advanced used to have not long ago). As much as price reductions sound like great news in the short term, one cannot help but wonder if the descending prices of 3D programs are enough for funding active research that can fuel their continuous development. We saw the first hints of this in early 2002, when Alias (then Alias|Wavefront) reduced Maya Complete's price from $7,500 to $1,999, a move which affected all the major players in the 3D animation software market. We'll have to wait and see how the other 3D software makers react, it seems likely that they will have to respond in one way or another.

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